1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to electronic devices, and more particularly, to a system and method that notifies a target user of events that occurred in a variety of electronic devices located in a certain area.
2. Description of the Related Art
Electronic devices may be categorized into, for example, home appliances, office appliances, medical devices, and industrial devices. Examples of electronic devices include televisions (TVs), refrigerators, washing machines, personal computers, electric fans, air-conditioners, Digital Versatile Disc (DVD) players, external loudspeakers, game devices, steam boilers, and light controllers.
Electronic devices may be connected to each other in a certain area (e.g., a home, an office, or a hospital) based on an Internet Protocol (IP), via a media system such as a gateway (GW), which forms a network (e.g., a home network). As such, when electronic devices are connected with a network including the media system, an electronic device managing system controls the electronic devices via an external device (e.g., a remote controller) connected to the media system in wireless/wired mode. The electronic device managing system allows users to control a variety of electronic devices in a certain area.
The conventional electronic device managing system allows users to control electronic devices in a network via external devices. If users wish to check use/operation states of respective electronic devices in a home network, they must directly check the corresponding electronic devices or they may roughly check via the gateway. Therefore, when network environments are developed such that a network is configured with a number of electronic devices, it may be difficult for users to check the state of each electronic device due to the electronic device managing system. In particular, if a user is outside of the area where electronic devices form a home network, the electronic device managing system does not allow the user to check the states of the electronic devices.
A conventional system may transmit messages reporting the operation states of electronic devices to all users who use them in the home network or to a pre-designated user. These messages let corresponding users acquire the related information. However, since a message transmitting system unconditionally transmits messages related to electronic devices to users without considering current user situations, the users may receive unnecessary messages. In addition, users may become overloaded by the number of messages transmitted by the message transmitting system.